More Like This

Preview

Having examined the purposes and functioning of Cohen’s style, the conclusion considers the philosophical implications of Cohen’s insistence that a performative reasoning through texts is necessary for successful communication of religious concepts. Through its very style and form, Religion of Reason stands as a sharp critique of the distortions that arise from contemporary attempts to speak or write about religious concepts in an “overly consistent” manner, and it points toward the possibility of a mode of communication in which philosophy itself must become “scriptural.” Likewise, though...

Having examined the purposes and functioning of Cohen’s style, the conclusion considers the philosophical implications of Cohen’s insistence that a performative reasoning through texts is necessary for successful communication of religious concepts. Through its very style and form, Religion of Reason stands as a sharp critique of the distortions that arise from contemporary attempts to speak or write about religious concepts in an “overly consistent” manner, and it points toward the possibility of a mode of communication in which philosophy itself must become “scriptural.” Likewise, though not all inconsistencies are inherently rational, the example of Cohen’s text points toward a more general argument that paradox and a lack of theoretical consistency is to be an expected and necessary feature of any rational communication of religion.